Empire Studies Around The Turn Of The Century

Empire is a very important historical phenomenon and polity. Since the emergence of empires, historians have conducted various types of research into empires, either expressing nostalgia for past empires, aspiring for hegemony, or focusing on the governance of colonies by the rulers. In the last decade after the end of the cold war, the western academic circle has seen the re-emergence of new empire studies, largely diverging from the traditional studies of empire and imperialism. The academics in Europe and the U. S. are trying to shift their focus from nation-states to a new form of global power, thereby putting empires in the core of debating. In this new critical perspective, the word "empire" has been endowed with new meanings.However, the Chinese academics in recent years have conducted little research into this area and only several articles recently published in journals and newspapers have touched upon this topic. Therefore, this dissertation aims, on the basis of a survey of the academic history of empire studies and tracing up the historical evolution of the meaning of "empire", to make a systematic research into and analysis of the Empire Studies by the western academics in the last post-cold-war decade, through the analysis of the representative works written by five outstanding western scholars, including Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals by Dominic Lieven, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power 1492—1763 by Henry Kamen, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power by Niall Ferguson, Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse and Revival of Empires by Alexander Motyl, and Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.The dissertation mainly focuses on the unique views and perspectives expressed by the authors, their analytical structures, and their contribution to post-cold-war Empire Studies especially at the turn of the century, as well as proposing the author's own views on some important theoretical and real issues related to this area.It is the main purpose of the dissertation to shed light on how the western academics try to provide a renewed understanding and explanation of the present global order and globalization process from the perspective of Empire Studies, thereby laying a basis for further research into this area by the Chinese academic circle. Apart from the introduction and epilogue, this dissertation is divided into seven chapters.The introduction gives a survey of the academic history of Empire Studies, dividing it into four phases, and briefly explains the present situation of the research, the main goal of this dissertation as well as its academic contribution and relevance to reality.Chapter One aims to lay a theoretical and conceptual basis for the following discussion by investigating into the theoretical approaches of Empire Studies, tracing the evolution of the meaning of "empire" in history as well as trying to define the word "empire" and its derivatives.Chapters Two to Six constitute the body of the dissertation. Each of the five chapters discusses the empire studies by one of the five scholars and basically follows a similar structure focusing on the unique perspective, views, logical structure of analysis and contribution of each scholar. Although the five authors differ from each other in their research methodology, perspectives, academic background and standing, their research overlap with each other in interesting ways and constitute a colorful picture of the Empires Studies around the turn of the century.Dominic Lieven, in his broad and ambitious book Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals, focuses on Russia and the rise and fall of the Tsarist and the Soviet Empire. By treating empire as a system, he uses comparative approaches to highlight the important role played by Russia in the expansion of Europe and its rise to global dominance. He contrasts the nature, strategies and fate of empire in Russia with that of its major rivals, the Habsburg, Ottoman, and British empires, and considers a broad range of other cases from ancient China and Rome to the present-day United States, globalization and the European Union.Niall Ferguson, in his Empire: The Rise and Fall of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, narrates the history of the British Empire in less than 400 pages, giving high praise to its morality and its contribution to the advancement of modernity while admitting its sins. He also tries to persuade the U.S. to rise to its appointed imperial role.Henry Kamen, in his Empire: How Spain Became a World Power 1492-1763, focuses on a fact seldom observed by other historians that the rise of the Spainish empire is not a task that the Spaniards could accomplish alone, but a co-operative cause by many peoples in a variety of nations. He treats the empire itself as a specific kind of structure and the Spanish society emerged out of its rise and fall.Alexander Motyl, in his Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse and Revival of Empires, proposes a structural model for empires and examines the structure, dynamics and continuing relevance of empire. While broad-ranging historically and empirically, Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse and Revival of Empires focuses on five modern empires: the Soviet, Romanov, Ottoman, Habsburg and Wilhelmine. With boldly stated conclusions and concise analytical interpretations, Motyl cohesively illustrates to policymakers and social scientists alike the importance of possible imperial revivals and the rise of future empires.Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri are representative of another branch of post-cold war empire studies. In Empire they propose a brand new concept of Empire, which is a newly emerging form of global governance in the globalization era. By analyzing its structure, nature, way of production and its opposite side—'mulititude', they provide us with post-modern reflections on globalization and empire from the left camp.The final chapter serves as the conclusion of the dissertation. After giving an in-depth analysis of the structure of Empire Studies at the turn of the century, it presents the author's own views on some key issues in post-cold-war Empire studies, such as the rise and fall of empires, the legitimacy of empires, empire and globalization and the future of the present global order.The dissertation concludes that Empire Studies at the turn of the century has developed a unique academic structure of its own, ie., integration of time and space, combination of microscopic and macroscopic study, and changes in the relationship between the subject and object. When investigating into the rise and fall of empires, we should take into consideration both domestic and international factors, the situation of both the center and the periphery. The legitimacy of empire should be discussed in terms of its function, procedure and value. Finally, although the U.S. today has been implanting imperialist foreign policies one way or another, whether it has already become an empire needs further discussion.